FEATURED PROJECT: Printing, Warehousing, Fulfillment & Distribution

May 6th, 2010

PROJECT: Print, warehouse and distribute a religious education program. To get the job done, it requires: digital and offset printing, perfect binding, saddle stitching, hand-assembly & collating, warehousing, fulfillment and distribution . 60% of the components include teacher books, perfect bound books, saddle stitched books with pockets inside the back cover that hold little pieces, CD's, reference charts, and all sorts of little extras. The other 40% is the monthly lessons that usually include 3 - 12 or 16 page books, several loose sheets, and the pieces to do the home lessons.

GOAL: This client writes an entire religious education program for their own church which they also sell to other churches and home-schoolers. Sales of their product had grown to a level that no longer made it practical for their staff and volunteers to manage, assemble, ship and store. They needed a "right-sized" printing company that could give personalized service and work through the processes and goals with them to make it as efficient as possible while not losing the personal relationship with their clients and the identity they had worked to hard to create for the product. They also needed a printing company that could warehouse everything for the kits, but that would be open to shuttling items back and forth to them as needed.

PROCESS: The curriculum follows the school year, so from August to May the largest portion of the work is the monthly lessons. The monthly curriculum works like this: they upload the files through our on-line ordering system, we show proofs, they approve proofs or make changes, and then we produce enough for their own church and home-school subscribers (which we deliver to them for their volunteers to kit and ship). We handle the fulfillment of the subscriptions for lessons that ship to other churches. May to August, when we aren't producing the monthly lessons, we are often working on stocking up on all the extras to get ready for the autumn rush. Year 'round we receive email order instructions for those items, and "pick and pack" those a few times per week. In the 3-1/2 years we have been working with them, little changes have taken place along the way to make it more and more efficient. At this point most of the process has been smoothed out, there are only the occasional oddities to handle on a case-by-case basis.

RESULTS: By helping them feel secure that everything is well taken care of they are free to pursue their core competencies: writing and refining the curriculum, customer service, and most of all, increasing sales without the stress of having to handle everything in-house. They also had space constraints they no longer have to worry about. I'll let the client do the talking about how they think it is going - here's an email we received from them within the last week: Jane and I were just talking yesterday about what an incredible gift you and Highlight Printing are and how there is NO WAY IN THE WORLD we could be doing this without you! What would normally interrupt our regular schedule of work throughout the day and consume a huge amount of time now requires a few taps on the keyboard to you and, like magic, you always have a ready answer and make it all right. THANK YOU, THANK YOU for ALL that you and your staff do!

LISA'S NOTES: Every printing company has their strengths, ours lie in systematizing the procedures and stream-lining processes, thereby saving overall dollars and reducing the chances for error. Additionally, we excel at putting ourselves in our clients' shoes and really listening to what it is that they want to accomplish, and then suggesting creative and cost-saving ways to make that happen. Obviously, this client is easy to love because they love us right back, but that means we just ramp it up even a little farther in our quest to do the very best we can for them! At the end of the day, we get to go home knowing we are helping to strengthen another business, combined with the gratification of being a small part of the good work that they do. Highlight Printing is a well-respected Minneapolis printer that focuses on the complete needs of the client from creative to offset printing and digital printing, 3M Post-It notes, bindery, warehousing, fulfillment, mailing, and distribution. Our latest offerings include web-development and promotional products. Please contact us @ 612.522.7600, sales@highlightprinting.com or check us out on the web at www.highlightprinting.com